Environmental psychology: cuing consumers to save the environment

Lama Lteif, Patrycja Sleboda and Lauren Block

Chapter 17 in Handbook of Social Psychology and Consumer Behavior, 2026, pp 236-250 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Environmental consumer psychology examines the cues in built and natural environments that influence consumers’ actions, behaviors, and choices. This field has recently focused on how these cues affect environmentally friendly practices. This chapter reviews the cues that consumers encounter daily, which either facilitate or hinder environmentally friendly behaviors. In doing so, we offer the unifying term Environmentally Conscious Objectives (ECO) to represent these behaviors and present a framework that illustrates how specific communication cues and social cues influence ECO behaviors. We discuss five communication cues – Framing, Affective content, Congruity, Tangibility and Signals (FACTS) – and their role in shaping consumers’ perceptions of individual impact. We then review the research that shows how Social norms, Opinion leadership and Social presence (SOS) are influential social cue factors driving ECO behaviors. The chapter aims to provide insights into how increasing awareness of the impacts of these cues can foster greater ECO behavior.

Keywords: Eco-friendly; Sustainable consumption; Environmentally friendly; Climate change; Green consumption; Environmental psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035327591
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